Tuesday, July 16, 2019

IBM and AT&T announced a multi-year strategic alliance with the following major points:

AT&T will use IBM's expertise to modernize AT&T Business Solutions' internal software applications, enabling migrations to the IBM Cloud.

IBM will provide infrastructure to support AT&T Business's applications.

AT&T Business will utilize Red Hat's open source platform to manage workloads and applications.

IBM will make AT&T Business its primary provider of software defined networking.

AT&T Business will help transform IBM's networking solutions with their latest technologies including 5G, Edge Compute, and IOT as well as multi-cloud capabilities using Red Hat.

The two companies will also collaborate on edge computing platforms.

AT&T Business has previously been designated as IBM's strategic global networking provider.

"In AT&T Business, we're constantly evolving to better serve business customers around the globe by securely connecting them to the digital capabilities they need," said Thaddeus Arroyo, CEO of AT&T Business. "This includes optimizing our core operations and modernizing our internal business applications to accelerate innovation. Through our collaboration with IBM, we're adopting open, flexible, cloud technologies, that will ultimately help accelerate our business leadership."

"Building on IBM's 20-year relationship with AT&T, today's agreement is another major step forward in delivering flexibility to AT&T Business so it can provide IBM and its customers with innovative services at a faster pace than ever before," said Arvind Krishna, Senior Vice President, Cloud and Cognitive Software, IBM. "We are proud to collaborate with AT&T Business, provide the scale and performance of our global footprint of cloud data centers, and deliver a common environment on which they can build once and deploy in any one of the appropriate footprints to be faster and more agile."

Tuesday, July 9, 2019

IBM completed its $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat ($190.00 per share in cash) in a deal aimed at positioning the merged company as the leader in hybrid cloud technologies.
Together, IBM and Red Hat promise to accelerate innovation by offering a next-generation hybrid multicloud platform based on open source technologies, such as Linux and Kubernetes, that enables businesses to securely deploy, run and manage data and applications on-premises and on private and multiple public clouds.

"Businesses are starting the next chapter of their digital reinventions, modernizing infrastructure and moving mission-critical workloads across private clouds and multiple clouds from multiple vendors," said Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and CEO. "They need open, flexible technology to manage these hybrid multicloud environments. And they need partners they can trust to manage and secure these systems. IBM and Red Hat are uniquely suited to meet these needs. As the leading hybrid cloud provider, we will help clients forge the technology foundations of their business for decades to come."
Red Hat's fiscal year 2019 revenue was $3.4 billion, up 15 percent year-over-year. Fiscal first quarter 2020 revenue, reported in June, was $934 million, up 15 percent year-over-year. In that quarter, subscription revenue was up 15 percent year-over-year, including revenue from application development-related and other emerging technology offerings up 24 percent year-over-year. Services revenue also grew 17 percent.

Red Hat will continue to be led by Jim Whitehurst and its current management team.

IBM agreed to acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat for $190.00 per share in cash, representing a total enterprise value of approximately $34 billion.

IBM and Red Hat said that as a combined company tthey will be strongly positioned to address the migration of all businesses to multi-cloud environments in an open and secure way. They estimate that 80% of business workloads have yet to move to the cloud. The merger will draw on their shared leadership in key technologies, such as Linux, containers, Kubernetes, multi-cloud management, and cloud management and automation

IBM was an early supporter of Linux, collaborating with Red Hat to help develop and grow enterprise-grade Linux and more recently to bring enterprise Kubernetes and hybrid cloud solutions to customers.

IBM said it will remain committed to Red Hat’s open governance, open source contributions, participation in the open source community and development model, and fostering its widespread developer ecosystem. It also promises to build and enhance Red Hat partnerships, including those with major cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba and more, in addition to the IBM Cloud.

“The acquisition of Red Hat is a game-changer. It changes everything about the cloud market,” said Ginni Rometty, IBM Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. “IBM will become the world’s #1 hybrid cloud provider, offering companies the only open cloud solution that will unlock the full value of the cloud for their businesses.

“Open source is the default choice for modern IT solutions, and I’m incredibly proud of the role Red Hat has played in making that a reality in the enterprise,” said Jim Whitehurst, President and CEO, Red Hat. “Joining forces with IBM will provide us with a greater level of scale, resources and capabilities to accelerate the impact of open source as the basis for digital transformation and bring Red Hat to an even wider audience – all while preserving our unique culture and unwavering commitment to open source innovation.”

Tuesday, June 18, 2019

Cisco and IBM are building on a joint hybrid cloud partnership to deliver a common developer experience across on-premise and cloud environments. The companies had previously committed to a joint Kubernetes experience across on-premise and cloud environments.

The goal is to allow developers to quickly build, test and deliver microservices applications across a hybrid cloud infrastructure.

IBM Cloud Private will now be supported on Cisco HyperFlex and HyperFlex Edge hyperconverged infrastructure.

Cisco and IBM are also working together on a broader hybrid cloud architecture that will leverage expertise from both partners:

Cisco’s enterprise-class data center, networking, and analytics

IBM’s hybrid cloud solutions that include open source components such as containers, Kubernetes, Open Whisk, KNative, Istio, Cloud Foundry, and Prometheus, as well as an extensive catalog of IBM enterprise software and open source software, VMware services, virtual and bare metal servers.

Sunday, May 5, 2019

Vodafone Idea (India) awarded a five-year, multimillion dollar contract to IBM to provide a hybrid cloud based digital platform for improving engagement with the carrier's 387 million subscribers.

Vodafone Idea will use IBM's Hybrid and Multicloud, analytics and AI security capabilities to move to an open, agile and secure IT environment.

"Consumers have come to expect mobile networks that effortlessly meet their data demands providing the consistency and flexibility required in today's era of interconnectedness," said Juan Zufiria, IBM Senior Vice President of Global Technology Services. "Our collaboration with Vodafone Idea will take advantage of Hybrid and Multicloud, Analytics and AI, to enable Vodafone Idea to further differentiate itself in the market, including by leveraging the convergence of Network and IT in the Cloud."

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

IBM has made Watson portable across any cloud as well as on-premise enterprise infrastructure.

In opening Watson beyond its own cloud, IBM said its goal is to provide businesses with a simpler, faster way to build, deploy and run AI models and applications across any cloud.

Highlights:

Introducing the ability to run IBM Watson services, including Watson Assistant and Watson OpenScale, on any cloud. Through their integration with IBM Cloud Private for Data (ICP for Data), Watson and Watson OpenScale can now be run any environment – on premises, or on any private, public or hybrid-multicloud – enabling businesses to apply AI to data wherever it is hosted. Businesses will be able to infuse AI into their apps, regardless of where they reside. The flexibility this affords can remove one of the major obstacles to scaling AI, since businesses can now leave data in secure or preferred environments and take Watson to that data.

Deploy AI software that automates business processes for improved efficiencies and performance. New AI digital automation software is designed to enable clients to discover patterns in their business processes and then create AI-embedded programs to automate certain workflows.

The announcements leverage a series of new Watson microservices built for ICP for Data that are based on Kubernetes, enabling these new Watson microservices to be run on IBM Cloud, and other public, hybrid or multi-cloud environments.

"Businesses have largely been limited to experimenting with AI in siloes due to the limitations caused by cloud provider lock-in of their data," said Rob Thomas, General Manager, IBM Data and AI. "With most large organizations storing data across hybrid cloud environments, they need the freedom and choice to apply AI to their data wherever it is stored. By breaking open that siloed infrastructure we can help businesses accelerate their transformation through AI."

Thursday, January 17, 2019

IBM and Vodafone Business are establishing a new venture focused on digital transformation enabled by 5G, Edge and Software Defined Networking.

Under the new venture, Vodafone Business customers will have access to IBM's cloud offerings. IBM will provide managed services to Vodafone Business' cloud and hosting unit, in an eight-year engagement valued at approximately $550 million (€480 million). Customers will benefit from IBM's optimisation, automation and cognitive capabilities which help them to run their business effectively in a cloud environment. The venture will co-develop new digital solutions, combining Vodafone's leadership in IoT, 5G and edge computing with IBM's multicloud, industry expertise and professional services. The companies expect to be up an running in the first half of this year.

"IBM has built industry-leading hybrid cloud, AI and security capabilities underpinned by deep industry expertise," said IBM Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty. "Together, IBM and Vodafone will use the power of the hybrid cloud to securely integrate critical business applications, driving business innovation – from agriculture to next-generation retail."

"Vodafone has successfully established its cloud business to help our customers succeed in a digital world," said Vodafone CEO Nick Read. "This strategic venture with IBM allows us to focus on our strengths in fixed and mobile technologies, whilst leveraging IBM's expertise in multicloud, AI and services. Through this new venture we'll accelerate our growth and deepen engagement with our customers while driving radical simplification and efficiency in our business."

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

IBM Services announced a $325 million agreement with Juniper Networks in which IBM will assist in managing Juniper's existing infrastructure, applications and IT services to help reduce costs and enhance their journey to the cloud.
As part of the seven-year agreement, IBM will use the IBM Services Platform with Watson to help manage Juniper's support systems including data centers, help desks and data and voice networks.

"A key element of our digital transformation is to manage the complexities of our global operation and to get the most out of our current investments," said Bob Worrall, Chief Information Officer, Juniper Networks. "In working with IBM Services, we will be able to collaborate with them on innovative solutions for our cloud-first business model."

"Our work with thousands of enterprises globally has led us to the firm belief that a 'one-cloud-fits-all' approach doesn't work and companies are choosing multiple cloud environments to best meet their needs," said Martin Jetter, Senior Vice President of IBM Global Technology Services. "Working with Juniper, we are integrating cloud solutions with their existing IT investments via the IBM Service Platform with Watson. This gives them the opportunity to generate more value from existing infrastructure, along with helping them manage strategic services that are critical to their business."

Sunday, October 28, 2018

IBM agreed to acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat for $190.00 per share in cash, representing a total enterprise value of approximately $34 billion.

IBM and Red Hat said that as a combined company tthey will be strongly positioned to address the migration of all businesses to multi-cloud environments in an open and secure way. They estimate that 80% of business workloads have yet to move to the cloud. The merger will draw on their shared leadership in key technologies, such as Linux, containers, Kubernetes, multi-cloud management, and cloud management and automation

IBM was an early supporter of Linux, collaborating with Red Hat to help develop and grow enterprise-grade Linux and more recently to bring enterprise Kubernetes and hybrid cloud solutions to customers.

IBM said it will remain committed to Red Hat’s open governance, open source contributions, participation in the open source community and development model, and fostering its widespread developer ecosystem. It also promises to build and enhance Red Hat partnerships, including those with major cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba and more, in addition to the IBM Cloud.

“The acquisition of Red Hat is a game-changer. It changes everything about the cloud market,” said Ginni Rometty, IBM Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. “IBM will become the world’s #1 hybrid cloud provider, offering companies the only open cloud solution that will unlock the full value of the cloud for their businesses.

“Open source is the default choice for modern IT solutions, and I’m incredibly proud of the role Red Hat has played in making that a reality in the enterprise,” said Jim Whitehurst, President and CEO, Red Hat. “Joining forces with IBM will provide us with a greater level of scale, resources and capabilities to accelerate the impact of open source as the basis for digital transformation and bring Red Hat to an even wider audience – all while preserving our unique culture and unwavering commitment to open source innovation.”

Red Hat reported revenue of $823 million, up 14% in USD year-over-year, for its second quarter of fiscal year 2019 ended August 31, 2018. GAAP operating income for the quarter was $135 million. Non-GAAP operating income for the second quarter was $197 million, up 3% year-over-year. For the second quarter, GAAP operating margin was 16.4% and non-GAAP operating margin was 23.9%.

“Our second quarter results were consistent with our guidance and we drove 20% growth in total backlog to $3.3 billion,” said Eric Shander, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Red Hat. “

Subscription revenue from Infrastructure-related offerings for the quarter was $527 million, an increase of 8% in USD year-over-year, or 8% measured in constant currency.

Subscription revenue from Application Development-related and other emerging technology offerings for the quarter was $196 million, an increase of 31% in USD year-over-year, or 31% measured in constant currency.

Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13, the newest version of Red Hat’s cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution provides the capability to containerize all OpenStack services, including networking and storage, for the first time in a Red Hat OpenStack offering.

Some key features of Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13:

Red Hat Ceph Storage for massively scalable, integrated storage, which enables organizations to more quickly provision hundreds of virtual machines from a single snapshot and build a fully-supported storage solution.

Fast Forward upgrades -- gives customers the option to stay on a faster upgrade path and receive new features from the upstream community every six months, or remain on a supported release for a longer period of time.

Integration of security related projects such as OpenStack Barbican, providing tenant level lifecycle management of secrets, such as passwords, security certificates and keys. With the introduction of Barbican, encryption related use cases are now available, such as Cinder encrypted volume support, Glance image signing and Swift object encryption.

Increased TLS coverage for internal communication flows for services such as VNC, OpenDaylight and Redis. The introduction of these features can enable customers to better comply with security standards such as FedRAMP, SecNumCloud, and other industry specific risk management frameworks.

The companies said there is growing consensus that container technologies are the best way to move applications across multiple IT footprints, from existing data centers to the public cloud and vice versa.

Under their agreement, enterprise customers will be able to more easily adopt a hybrid cloud strategy with IBM Cloud Private and Red Hat OpenShift serving as the common foundation. This will enable the IBM Cloud Private container platform to provide a single view of all enterprise data.

"Businesses are turning to the cloud to extract new value from their data and deliver better customer experiences faster than ever before," said Kit Linton, Vice President of Network, IBM Cloud. "The combination of Digital Realty's extensive global reach and highly resilient connectivity from IBM Cloud Direct Link can help businesses build the protected, hybrid cloud environment they need to innovate at scale."

"Providing enterprise connectivity to the extensive range of services available through IBM Cloud via Direct Link ensures customers not only have access to the compute and storage resources they need, but they are also able to leverage more advanced cloud applications like analytics, blockchain technology and the Internet of Things," said Digital Realty Chief Technology Officer Chris Sharp. "We look forward to continuing to work closely with IBM to enable our mutual customers to access the cloud services they need to accelerate their own business growth, no matter where they may be located."

Monday, June 11, 2018

IBM Cloud continues to build out its cloud footprint with 18 new availability zones in Europe (Germany and UK), Asia-Pacific (Tokyo and Sydney), and North America (Washington, DC and Dallas, Texas).

An availability zone is an isolated instance of cloud inside a data center region, with independent power, cooling and networking to strengthen fault tolerance.

IBM Cloud already operates in nearly 60 locations. This expansion gives it more capacity and capability in these key centers. Additionally, clients will be able to deploy multizone Kubernetes clusters across the availability zones via the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, simplifying how they deploy and manage containerized applications and adding further consistency to their experience.

IBM also announced several marquee customers for its cloud platform, including ExxonMobil, Bausch + Lomb and Westpac.

"The world's biggest companies work with IBM to migrate them to the cloud because we know their technology and unique business needs as they bridge their past with the future," said David Kenny, senior vice president, IBM Watson & Cloud Platform. "Our continued cloud investment and growing client roster reflect that companies are increasingly seeking hybrid cloud environments that offer cutting edge tools including AI, analytics, IoT and blockchain to maximize their benefits."

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

IBM will extend its private cloud platforms (IBM Cloud Private and IBM Cloud Private for Data) and its middleware offerings to Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform as Red Hat Certified Containers.
The agreement builds on IBM’s recent move to re-engineer its entire software portfolio with containers, including WebSphere, MQ Series and Db2.

The companies said there is growing consensus that container technologies are the best way to move applications across multiple IT footprints, from existing data centers to the public cloud and vice versa.

Under their agreement, enterprise customers will be able to more easily adopt a hybrid cloud strategy with IBM Cloud Private and Red Hat OpenShift serving as the common foundation. This will enable the IBM Cloud Private container platform to provide a single view of all enterprise data.

“With IBM’s recent move to containerize its middleware, today’s landmark partnership between IBM and Red Hat provides customers with more choice and flexibility. Our common vision for hybrid cloud using container architectures allows millions of enterprises – from banks, to airlines, to government organizations - to access leading technology from both companies without having to choose between public and private cloud,” stated Arvind Krishna, Senior Vice president, IBM Hybrid Cloud.

“Today’s enterprises need a succinct roadmap for digital transformation as well as confidence in deployment consistency across every IT footprint. By extending our long-standing collaboration with IBM, we’re bringing together two leading enterprise application platforms in Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and IBM Cloud Private and adding the power of IBM’s software and cloud solutions. Together, we’re providing customers with a supported, consistent offering across their computing environments,” said Paul Cormier, President, Products and Technologies, Red Hat.

"In the first quarter we maintained momentum in our business, with reported revenue growth in total and across our major segments," said Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer. "These results reinforce that our clients value our innovative technologies, our industry expertise and our commitment and actions for the responsible stewardship of their privacy and data. This is also reflected in our leadership positions in enterprise cloud, AI and security."

Some highlights:

Strategic imperatives revenue over the last 12 months was $37.7 billion, up 12 percent (up 10 percent adjusting for currency).

Total cloud revenue over the last 12 months was $17.7 billion, up 22 percent (up 20 percent adjusting for currency).

Monday, March 19, 2018

Rambus and IBM announced a research pact to develop hybrid memory systems for data centers.

The companies aim to optimize the use of DRAM and emerging memories to create a high-capacity memory subsystem that "delivers comparable performance to DRAM alone."

As part of the collaboration, Rambus will develop a flexible prototype hybrid memory platform using the OpenCAPI interface to demonstrate the performance of multiple memory types in real-world server applications. Specifically, Rambus will leverage IBM’s POWER9 processor and its OpenCAPI high-performance interface to build a Hybrid Memory and development subsystem prototype. To move forward on this project, Rambus announced it has joined the OpenCAPI Consortium, an open development community based on Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface technology, and OpenPOWER Foundation, an open development community based on the IBM Power Architecture.

“The exploding volume of data and rapidly evolving workloads for Big Data applications are placing tremendous pressure on data center memory systems for increased performance and capacity,” said Laura Stark, senior vice president and general manager of the Emerging Solutions Division at Rambus. “This project with IBM demonstrates our ongoing collaboration with the industry to accelerate the development and adoption of advanced memory solutions.”

“IBM is excited to collaborate with Rambus regarding advanced memory technologies on the OpenCAPI interface of POWER9 systems,” said Steve Fields, IBM fellow and chief engineer of Power Systems. “IBM believes in transforming the architecture of server memory to allow open innovation and to fully exploit the diversity of memory technologies that will emerge in the coming years. This project leverages the new architecture to combine the best attributes of multiple types of media to achieve new levels of system cost/performance for memory-intensive cloud deployments and AI applications.”

Sunday, January 21, 2018

IBM and Salesforce are working to integrate IBM Cloud and Watson services with Salesforce Quip and Salesforce Service Cloud Einstein to enable companies to connect with their customers and collaborate more effectively with deeper insights.

In addition, Salesforce has named IBM a preferred cloud services provider and IBM has named Salesforce its preferred customer engagement platform for sales and service.

"Naming IBM as a Salesforce preferred cloud services provider demonstrates the power of the IBM Cloud to help companies fundamentally change the way they do business," said Ginni Rometty, chairman, president and CEO, IBM. "This expanded partnership builds on the combined power of Watson and Einstein to help enterprises make smarter business decisions."

"The success of our customers drives everything we do at Salesforce, including our strategic partnership with IBM," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, Salesforce. "The combination of IBM Cloud and Watson services with Salesforce Einstein and Quip will deliver even more innovation to empower companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way, leveraging the power of the cloud and AI."

Thursday, January 18, 2018

BT launched a new service to provide global businesses with direct access to IBM Cloud via the BT network.

Within the UK, the BT Cloud Connect Direct now provides connectivity into IBM Cloud data centres in the UK.

This will be followed in the coming months with direct connectivity into IBM Cloud data centres in mainland Europe, the US, Australia and Asia, optimising performance and compliance for customers in those regions.

Cloud Connect Direct for IBM will be managed and supported from a single BT-managed service desk, providing proactive management and quality of service.

There was a GAAP net loss of $1.1 billion from continuing operations, including a one-time charge of $5.5 billion associated with the enactment of U.S. tax reform.. Non-GAAP operating revenue was $4.8 billion.

"Over the past several years we have invested aggressively in technology and our people to reposition IBM,” said James Kavanaugh, IBM senior vice president and chief financial officer. "2018 will be all about reinforcing IBM's leadership position in key high-value segments of the IT industry, including cloud, AI, security and blockchain."

IBM said its cloud revenue over the last 12 months amounted to $17.0 billion, including $9.3 billion delivered as-a-service and $7.8 billion for hardware, software and services to enable IBM clients to implement comprehensive cloud solutions.

Thursday, December 7, 2017

IBM unveiled its next-generation Power Systems Servers based on its newly designed POWER9 processor and designed for compute-intensive AI workloads and frameworks, such as Chainer, TensorFlow and Caffe, as well as accelerated databases such as Kinetica.

The new POWER9-based AC922 Power Systems are the first to embed PCI-Express 4.0, next-generation NVIDIA NVLink and OpenCAPI, which combined can accelerate data movement, calculated at 9.5x faster than PCI-E 3.0 based x86 systems.

IBM calculates that its new POWER9 systems are capable of improving the training times of deep learning frameworks by nearly 4x.

“Google is excited about IBM's progress in the development of the latest POWER technology," said Bart Sano, VP of Google Platforms "The POWER9 OpenCAPI Bus and large memory capabilities allow for further opportunities for innovation in Google data centers."

"We’ve built a game-changing powerhouse for AI and cognitive workloads,” said Bob Picciano, SVP of IBM Cognitive Systems. “In addition to arming the world’s most powerful supercomputers, IBM POWER9 Systems is designed to enable enterprises around the world to scale unprecedented insights, driving scientific discovery enabling transformational business outcomes across every industry.”

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

AT&T is launching its microservices supplier program in partnership with IBM. The idea is to offer a new approach to delivering business functionality for software developers. AT&T said that it is a heavy user of microservices for its internal systems.

Under this partnership, IBM will collaborate with AT&T to design, develop and deploy microservices that will transform AT&T’s business backend processes. IBM’s creation of microservices across sales, ordering, and enterprise data will enhance and modernize AT&T’s mission-critical systems. This enables higher-performing backend processing with minimal downtime while allowing the whole business to adapt quickly to changing market dynamics through the deployment of new fast and easy to access services and capabilities.

“Our software journey has focused on virtualizing our network functions to give more speed and flexibility than the traditional hardware model,” said Melissa Arnoldi, president, AT&T Technology and Operations. “We’re now looking at the 2,200+ apps in our IT system. And we’re starting to break them up into microservices to create agility, speed, and scalability that wasn’t possible before. Microservices are at the very core of our vision for the future of our network.”

Earlier this week, AT&T introduced Acumos, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that makes it easy to build, share and deploy AI applications, built with microservices.

Thursday, October 12, 2017

IBM is joining forces with Google to create and open source the Grafeas project, which is an open source initiative to define a uniform way for auditing and governing the modern software supply chain.

Grafeas (“scribe” in Greek) provides a central source of truth for tracking and enforcing policies across an ever growing set of software development teams and pipelines. The idea is to provide a central store that other applications and tools can query to retrieve metadata on software components of all kinds.

IBM is also working on Kritis, a component which allows organizations to set Kubernetes governance policies based on metadata stored in Grafeas.